Sunday, August 26, 2018

Redistribution of Wealth and Death

Redistributing wealth after a person dies only perpetuates a world where there are wealthy individuals who remain wealthy--this is the world we live in presently. In the social world we have created for thousands of years, kings would give their power and wealth to their children (primarily sons because of tradition and bias) and those children would increase the household wealth, giving their children the incentive to please their father so that they can be held "worthy" of the amassed wealth.

Redistributing wealth before a person dies is also problematic. In the unique situation where a wealthy king or capitalist did not have heirs, he or she could opt to choose someone to be their stand-in heir. This involves a lot of political intrigue. Many of Shakespeare's plays explored the problems with this type of wealth and power redistribution.


After-Death Redistribution (ADR) of wealth favors the cheats of the world, the aggressive, the liars, so on and so forth--people who break society's rules to gain wealth. It favors such lowlifes because if they are not the wealthy powerful king or tycoon, in order for them to compete and rise to a level comparable with their local wealthiest person, they must cheat in order to rise at rapid enough of rate as to surpass or maintain the distance between the two of them!--If you are wealthy and invest your wealth, because you have more money to invest, you will gain more than the person who invests a small amount and gains the same rate of yield as you do.
With this form of wealth progression, wealth in society dumbs down to who can manage their money the best so that they mitigate losses and maximize gains, as well as who can exploit the system so that they maximize their gains more than the next highest person. --And all you have to do to see the effects of this is look in any national newspaper in 2018. Investment Bankers cheating the poor by writing up fake loans so that the shares of their stocks are padded. Rulers of countries changing the laws to support their own agendas or that of their cronies. Corrupt police and investigative forces throughout the world who discover criminals making lots of money and so they blackmail and coerce them into working for them instead of their selfish interest. You even see management and company officers who earn 120 times of that which their blue-collar, producer workers earn.--The people who actually make the product are being exploited by those who, in many instances, don't even know the intricacies of how the product is made.
It is this kind of exploitation that we as a society would like to eliminate, but every attempt to do so is thwarted and then exploited by the cheats of the world. 

A few more forward thinking individuals have decided that they will give ALL of their wealth after-death to charitable organizations, and although this is a good step, it will not solve this problem. This is merely a middleman attempt at Redistribution Before a Person Dies (RBD). Such billionaires turn over their wealth to an appointed heir rather than a blood heir, the only difference is that the appointed heir is an organization of people rather than one individual, such as a non-profit charitable foundation.
Just like in olden days when the king would declare an heir after much political intrigue and cheating to get ahead, today's RBD billionaires are merely creating an environment where only a select few who reach a specific requirement receive the previously acquired wealth of one person.--Who determines where the money goes? If it's a board of individuals, that's better than a solitary president or financial manager, but it also creates a desirable position to be fought for where one or a couple people are rewarded with wealth or power to mete out wealth and power to other individuals as they see fit. Which, again, leads to exploitation, cheating, and gaming of this kind of system.

Regardless of whether you redistribute your wealth after death or before death, you are still in charge of who receives your wealth. You still choose who to give your money and power to and that opens the door for unfairness.--You may have earned your money from hard work, determination, guts, intense risk, and shrewd decision making, but whoever you give money to did not earn that money, and the rest of the world who did not receive that money unfairly must live in a competitive world where Privilege gives a competitive advantage to a select few.
Socialists of hundreds of years ago saw the problem with this system and were outraged enough to form political parties that would rob from the rich and give to the poor, but that wasn't a fair outcome for the rich--regardless of whether 100% of the money was earned or not, it is not fair to take the money right out of their hand because those people believe that it is the hard work and decision making and skill on their part that earned them that money.
So we see a system where people believe it is their own skill that is giving them an advantage over others even though it is skill at cheating, skill at sucking up, or luck of birth. --And...I supposed you could twist the meaning of the word "skill" to signify those things, but it doesn't change the reality of what you are doing, and what you are doing is unfair to some. Perhaps the belief that "everyone cheats" is enough justification to permit rampant cheating, but I believe that surely there must be a better way! Surely there must be the possibility of a more equitable society.

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